Components of various industrial devices are often subjected to extreme conditions, such as high-temperatures and high-impact contact with hard and/or abrasive surfaces. For example, extreme temperatures and pressures are commonly encountered during earth drilling for oil extraction or mining purposes. Diamond, with its unsurpassed mechanical properties, can be the most effective material when properly used in a cutter element or abrasion-resistant contact element for use in earth drilling. Diamond is exceptionally hard, conducts heat away from the point of contact with the abrasive surface, and may provide other benefits in such conditions.
Diamond in a polycrystalline form has added toughness as compared to single-crystal diamond due to the random distribution of the diamond crystals, which avoids the particular planes of cleavage found in single-crystal diamond. Therefore, PCD is frequently the preferred form of diamond in many drilling applications. A drill bit cutter element that utilizes PCD is commonly referred to as a polycrystalline diamond cutter (PDC). Accordingly, a drill bit incorporating PCD cutter elements may be referred to as a PDC bit.
PCD cutter elements may be coupled to an industrial device such as an earth-boring drill bit by any number of processes. The overhead in managing the chosen coupling process—in terms of cost, manpower, etc.—increases the cost of operating an industrial device.